


I Defied My Solitude; You Came Through Alone

by nonisland



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Friend Breakup, Gen, Magic nerdery, Pre-Canon, Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), canon-typical bad parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:47:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26916832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonisland/pseuds/nonisland
Summary: Lorenz looks around, startled, before he focuses on her. “Ah. Hello.” There’s something awfully blank about his expression.“You remember me, right?” Annette asks. She squints at the book he’s holding, trying to make out the faded gilt letters on the title. She can’t quite read them, but it’s something about a harvest, maybe, or harvests? They’re in the agricultural section of the library, anyway. “Annette. We were at the School of Sorcery together in Fhirdiad back in 1178.”
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic & Lorenz Hellman Gloucester, Annette Fantine Dominic & Mercedes von Martritz
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32





	I Defied My Solitude; You Came Through Alone

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally supposed to be a fill for [a kinkmeme prompt about Annette and Lorenz as middle school exes](https://3houseskinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/1608.html?thread=2591560) (I needed a break from working on a different “short fill” that…is not short and has eaten my last two weeks), but it went way off-course when I thought about how Lorenz seems a lot more excited about Reason than about lances but if Byleth doesn’t get involved he never ends up in a magical class, and also about how Count Gloucester is a horrible nightmare man. Also they didn’t end up having dated at the School of Sorcery, so.
> 
> Title is a flipped-around line from Leonard Cohen’s “[Is This What You Wanted](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04YaYbOqjbQ)” ( _you defied your solitude / I came through alone_ ). Thanks to Scott, as usual, for looking this over.
> 
> * * *

The Officers’ Academy at Garreg Mach Monastery is big and beautiful and exciting, and Annette is thrilled that Mercie is here too after all.

“I was so afraid your adoptive father wouldn’t let you come!” she says after she’s given Mercie the biggest hug she can. It had been so incredibly lonely, starting at the School of Sorcery when her father had taken off for goddess even knew where—maybe here?—to pay attention to Prince Dimitri instead of her, but Mercie had been so kind, and _is_ so kind, and leaving her had been the worst part of coming to the Officers’ Academy.

Mercie smiles at her. “Well, I was too, but I managed to convince him it would be for the best.”

“I’m so glad!” Annette says. “I hope our rooms aren’t too far apart—it’ll be just like being back in Fhirdiad again.”

Their rooms are right next to each other, which is the next best thing to sharing a room again. Mercie won’t be able to keep her up at night with ghost stories, but Mercie also won’t be there when Annette has nightmares, or help calm her down when she’s trying to study and she can’t even figure out where to start because there’s way too much of everything all at once.

It will be nice to have some privacy and some _quiet_ , though. She and Mercie had shared their room at the School of Sorcery with six other girls, and one of them snored and one of them hummed to herself all the time, and sometimes people complained that Annette was keeping them awake with her candle when she stayed up late reading. There was just too much to do to go to sleep, though, and they weren’t supposed to be in the library after curfew, so she hadn’t had any _choice_.

Prince Dimitri, the head of the Blue Lions’ house, really is very nice and very handsome—just like a storybook prince, when she’d always thought her father was exaggerating a little about how wonderful his Highness was. His vassal Dedue is awfully stern-looking, but he’s quiet, and very gentle with his Highness and with the plants in the greenhouse, so Annette figures that he can’t be as scary as people would expect her to believe. Ashe is really sweet, and Ingrid Galatea is polite and friendly, so between them and Mercie Annette thinks she’s probably all set. Which is for the best, because Sylvain Gautier is—ugh. Annette’s met boys like him before, who think they’re charming but really aren’t all that at _all_. And Felix Fraldarius is just _mean_ , all the time.

But fortunately even though they’re in the same house Annette figures she’ll mostly be spending time with Mercie, since the two of them are the only ones who do magic. She’s not really any good with a sword or a lance, and those seem to be the weapons the other nobles use. She’s _definitely_ not any good with a bow, which is Ashe’s thing, and she just doesn’t have the build to use an axe the way Dedue does.

She’s really looking forward to this year, all in all. An old friend, maybe a few new friends, and a chance to learn. It won’t be the same as studying at the School of Sorcery, but Professor Hanneman still has some very interesting ideas. She hopes she can impress him enough that when the professors pick their main classes at the end of the moon he figures the Blue Lions are worth teaching.

But, Annette reminds herself, she’s here to work on other things, too, not just her Reason magic—she does want to get better with an axe, if she can figure out how to make it work for someone her size, and if she ever needs to lead a battalion she’d like to know how to do that too. She’s seen Seteth—it’s so weird not to call him Professor Seteth, but he insists he’s not a professor—practicing axe fighting with some of the knights, and he’s amazing. Some of them are really good too. Hopefully one or another of them will be able to help her figure something out! And of course whoever their professor is will help them become better leaders. She should probably get someone to show her a few things with Faith magic, too, if she’s going to be responsible for other people in battles, even if they’re just mock battles—oh, and she really needs to get better at history and geography, too, probably, and maybe even economics, and _ugh_. There’s just so much!

It’s the third day of classes when she spots a familiar head of purple hair across the dining hall with the rest of the students from the Leicester Alliance—above most of them, except the blond guy with all the muscles, and still taller than most of the other students too. “Oh, Mercie!” she says. “Is that Lorenz?”

Lorenz Gloucester had started at the School of Sorcery the same year she had, but he hadn’t completed his studies. There’d been a rebellion way way off to the west, and Prince Dimitri and an army had put it down pretty quickly, but Count Gloucester had unenrolled Lorenz anyway. It had been a real shame—Lorenz had really liked it there, and he had some very clever ideas about practical applications of magic. He wasn’t really interested in magic theory, not in the sense of picking apart spell formulas and figuring out how they functioned so they could be stuck back together again, but he’d still liked figuring out how things in general worked, and he and Annette had been working on whether it was possible to alter a wind spell to power a mill when Count Gloucester’s letter had arrived.

Annette still hasn’t figured the darn thing out. Part of the problem is that she just doesn’t know that much about mills—Lorenz had really helped her figure out the framework, talking about all the parts of a standard grain windmill, and how the setup of a mill changed when it wasn’t grain being ground but paper being pressed, or logs being sawed, because _apparently_ in order to do those you needed a river, and if you didn’t have a river you just couldn’t saw your logs or make your paper.

She’s never actually seen a sawmill, is the thing. She’s never seen a paper mill, either, she just knows that paper comes in books and notebooks, as well as loose, and it’s _very_ useful but it’s one of those things she never really…thought about.

It’s awfully hard to figure out how to redesign a spell to do something if you don’t know how hard you need it to push, but Lorenz had made it sound _important_ , and she’d love it if something she did could actually help people. He’d said it would. He’d been really excited about the idea, in his weird way where he pretended he wasn’t actually excited but he sort of lit up about it. If they could finish it together, then she’d be able to say she’d really done something, and maybe Prince Dimitri would mention it next time he saw her father—not that that really matters, of course, because either way just knowing that people were using something she’d made happen would be wonderful.

“Oh dear,” Mercie says, frowning a little. “I think so.”

The biggest problem with Lorenz was that he’d been, well, kind of a snob. He was mostly harmless about it, Annette thought, but unlike Mercie she wasn’t a commoner, so she couldn’t really say for sure. Lorenz hadn’t tried to make other people do his chores or his homework for him, and maybe he’s grown out of it by now—she hopes so!—but back when they were at the School of Sorcery he had still definitely talked a lot about how important it was to be a noble, and how much more suited to blah blah blah Annette really _did not_ care. Some of their professors weren’t nobles and were still _brilliant_ at doing magic, so really what did it matter? And of course there were people like Mercie, who were just so kind and so good to be around that it shouldn’t even matter whether or not they’re nobles, because they make the world better just by being in it.

Annette jumps up. “I should say hello.” _Two_ old friends would be even better than one, and she really does miss having someone to talk about magic theory at all with. Professor Hanneman is wonderful at explaining the normal things, but she misses the _weird_ things, and he spends all his spare time on Crest research.

The problem with the Officers’ Academy is that really everything they officially do is geared toward being ready in case there’s a war, and that’s just no way to live your life, even aside from how it’s also no way to advance the study of magic. Which isn’t what she’s here for! She should remember that, but still, she loves researching, and if she’s going to make a difference in the world that’s going to be how, she just knows it. If _she_ were a professor, she’d definitely put some real effort into working with all of her students on their interests as well as pursuing her own.

“Eat first, Annie,” Mercie says. She’s still frowning, a worried little line Annette wants to smooth out. “There’ll be plenty of time to find him later.”

“All right,” Annette says, sitting back down. It’s probably for the best if she doesn’t try to make her way across the dining hall with this kind of crowd, anyway. She wouldn’t want to bump into anyone who was carrying a full plate, or even worse a cup of tea.

She manages to find him in the library that afternoon—it’s easy, now that she’s looking for him—and calls, “Hi, Lorenz!”

Lorenz looks around, startled, before he focuses on her. “Ah. Hello.” There’s something awfully blank about his expression.

“You remember me, right?” Annette asks. She squints at the book he’s holding, trying to make out the faded gilt letters on the title. She can’t quite read them, but it’s something about a harvest, maybe, or harvests? They’re in the agricultural section of the library, anyway. “Annette. We were at the School of Sorcery together in Fhirdiad back in 1178.”

“Yes, of course,” Lorenz says, drawing himself up and putting a hand to the rose pinned to his jacket. He _loves_ roses. One of the students the year before them had written a paper about magical cultivation of exotic blooms and he’d been so excited when they found it in the library, even though the author had eventually admitted her project needed more work to be practical.

It’s another familiar thing, and so Annette’s smile is warm and happy as she says, “It’s so good to see you again! How have you been? You never wrote—I was worried about you.”

Lorenz’s blank look cracks for just a flash, and whatever peeks through looks—wary, maybe, Annette doesn’t even know. “Well, I…it would hardly have been fair to you.”

“What?”

“You are a mere baron’s niece.” Lorenz draws himself up to his full and completely ridiculous height. He’s gotten even taller in the last two years, and Annette has _not_. Also, what? “As a potential bride, you would hardly serve the interests of House Gloucester, and I couldn’t allow you to entertain false hopes.”

Annette stares at him. “I— _what_?”

“It is most important,” Lorenz says, as if what he’s talking about hasn’t stopped making sense, oh, somewhere back in _Fhirdiad_ , “for me to find and select a suitable candidate for marriage, and I am fully aware that the ladies will hope for acknowledgement from me if I favor them with my attentions. Even if I had the time to waste entertaining unsuitable prospects, it would be most cruel to allow you to form expectations that I cannot meet.”

“I don’t want to marry you!” Annette yelps, much too loudly. A few heads turn, most of them students she doesn’t know yet. One of them is Dedue, though, which means his Highness is probably somewhere around, ugh. This really isn’t the kind of almost-first impression she’d wanted to make. She forces her voice lower. “I just wanted to _talk_ to you. What about that windmill spell you were helping me come up with?”

She’s looking closely this time, trying to make _any_ of it make sense, and there’s another flicker of that same maybe-wary look across Lorenz’s stupid smug face. He looks almost unhappy, which is completely his own fault. “A frivolous waste of time on my part,” he says. “A count’s heir has no need to personally involve himself with the innovations of workers. I’m sure you can make any changes you need on your own."

Annette actually can’t think of anything to say. She stamps her foot, and then she’s angry at herself for doing something so childish as well as at Lorenz for being like this. “If you’re going to be like that, I’ll…I’ll…”

“Enjoy your magic studies,” Lorenz says primly. “Please try not to be too heartbroken over the necessity of my leaving you behind in Fhirdiad.”

“Now wait a minute,” Annette says, still angry but not so angry her ears aren’t working. “Enjoy _my_ magic studies? I haven’t seen you at Professor Hanneman’s office hours, but aren’t you still…studying?” He’d been pretty good at it, after all. He has a good hand with a Fire spell, and he’d never complained about homework, even on the weekends, which a lot of their classmates had.

Nobody in the history of Fódlan has ever looked as much like they’ve been carved out of marble without actually being a statue as Lorenz does right now. “Magic is hardly a conventional field of study for the heir of a noble house. The history of nobles in battle is one of mounted knights, using their training and the finest equipment as others are unable to. Especially given the question of resources, I can hardly justify spending my time on such a distraction from my studies.”

Annette wants to scream, which she isn’t going to, or kick him, which she _also_ isn’t going to. They’d been friends, she’d thought. One time when she’d been so sick that she had to miss class for two days he’d lent her his notes, and they’d been really good notes! She’d almost wanted to ask him if he could keep doing that, but he’d been reserved enough that she hadn’t been sure what she could offer in return, and she hadn’t just wanted to take his time without giving him anything back—that wouldn’t have been fair. He’d been a good study partner, even if it was kind of weird that someone as cool and undemonstrative as he always had been had a knack for _fire_ magic.

“What about dark knights?” she demands. “ _They_ have horses and lances and don’t go around acting like they’re too good for magic.”

“You misunderstand me,” Lorenz says, eyes widening.

Annette wishes she were tall enough to glare down at him, instead of having to glare so far up. She settles for drawing her spine as straight as possible and putting her shoulders back. “I don’t think I misunderstand you at all. I’m sorry I even went looking for you.”

She turns and leaves, ignoring it when he calls after her—just once, and pretty quietly. With how much of his height is in his legs he could catch up to her easily if he even _tried_ , which he clearly doesn’t want to. Well, she’d already known she hadn’t actually misunderstood him. She should have just listened to Mercie in the first place.

“You were right,” Annette says that evening when she goes to Mercie’s room to get her for dinner. She kind of doesn’t want to go alone. “You always are! I should have listened.”

“Hmm?” Mercie asks. “Oh, have you seen my shawl? The evenings are so chilly right now…”

Annette hasn’t seen it, but Mercie doesn’t usually go to the library to study, which means it’s either here or in the classroom, and _that_ means… “There it is!” she says triumphantly, pointing at the windowsill where a jumble of cushions form an improvised padded seat. That’s a really nice idea, actually—she should try it herself.

“Thank you!” Mercie says with a smile, wrapping the shawl around herself. “What happened?”

“ _Ugh_ ,” Annette says. “Just—ugh! He’s the _worst_.”

Mercie’s smile disappears. “Sylvain?”

Annette dismisses Sylvain with a wave of her hand. He’d told her this morning that he just _loved_ smart girls, but the thing about Sylvain is that if she ignores him long enough he’ll usually move on to someone more receptive. “ _Lorenz_. I went to say hi to him and he told me that magic was a stupid waste of time that nobles shouldn’t even be bothering with.”

“Oh, Annie.” Mercie’s voice is so _gentle_ , and kind, and it’s so—it’s stupid, but she’d thought Lorenz had been her friend too, she’d thought he _liked_ magic, and instead this whole time he’d just been thinking about it like a childish little hobby and about _her_ like someone who only wanted to _marry_ him and also was only good to do the work he was too important for— “Don’t cry.”

“I’m not crying,” Annette says, but her voice is all wobbly. She swallows hard and, okay, maybe sniffs a bit. “It’s okay. You were right, that’s all. He’s a snob and I shouldn’t have even bothered trying to talk to him.”

Mercie puts a comforting arm around her. “You couldn’t have known.” She’s so soft, and she smells like lavender and sugar. Annette closes her eyes and leans into Mercie’s shoulder. “Sometimes people grow out of things like that. I think it was very good of you to try to reconnect with him.”

“He grew _into_ it,” Annette mumbles. “He was never this bad, Mercie.”

“We never really know what’s going on in other people’s minds,” Mercie says, which is _such_ a lie when Annette suspects that she has some kind of magical gift—or maybe a Crest power, or something—that lets her open people up like they’re a set of nesting dolls. “He shouldn’t have been unkind to you! I’m so sorry you were disappointed like that.”

Annette straightens back up with real reluctance. “Well, now I know, and I won’t waste my time with him again.”

“There you go,” Mercie says. “I’ll tell you what—what if I bake you some of my mother’s special cream puffs after dinner?”

“Really?” Annette asks, already feeling a lot more enthusiastic about going back to the dining hall. “I’d love that! Your sweets are always the absolute best, and I’d _love_ to try your mother’s recipe!”

Mercie opens the door. “Well, then. Let’s get going, shall we?”

It’s going to be all right. She still has Mercie, and she’ll make new friends—better friends—here at Garreg Mach. One rude boy won’t ruin her whole year.

Head up, Annette follows Mercie out into the hall.


End file.
